poemimage

The visual & the poetic.
April 9, 2026

Enough is Enough!

A crack in the ant farm discombobulates the matrix, now tilted, now losing speed.

Cyclops sits at the tip of a chanting pinecone, his archaic inner eye scratched in the emergency.

A local physician, loyal to the mountain’s daughter, signs a prescription in cursive font elegant as a Hellenistic vase.

Enough is enough!

Now Zeroic/Freakshow/Peepshow-naut!

Now climb yourself down into the ruins & rubble of the elementary school.

Tie your shoelaces to a ball & chain.

Throw yourself into the pit of echoes.

Into the echoes of a child’s musical instrument!

Now Zeroic/Freakshow/Peepshow-naut!

Now double-check the iron door locked & bolted.

As you fine-tune trajectories & place carnival funhouse mirrors in the corners of the room.

Surgeons sit broken in their spirits on rickety wooden chairs warped like Plastic Putty.

A gleaming star-spangled Tower of Babel hacksaw coughs up your throat.

You replace stuffed animals & spinning toys with the Private Plane Island Radio Network.

& Les Demoiselles d’Avignon ejects out a fountain & carbon copies of the muse twisted by economic exploitation

& existential alienation surrender dignity.

& Manipulations of the economy to benefit the Private Plane Island Radio Network desecrate the mythological play-acting of children.

In pink & blue candlelight, glowing like crepe paper, a white pony cartoon pirouettes on your drone screen.

In damp sewer pipes, beaded & gleaming, a rusted tin-grasshopper head gives birth out his ear to a cardboard jukebox.

Repeat. The muse demoted.

Now Zeroic/Freakshow/Peepshow-naut! Now satisfy the plastic-wrap demons!

& Elsewhere (for yes there is an elsewhere) prepare the shapeshifting wand!

Now become a falling star.

A falling star remembers Noah gazing into a deep azure sky.

A falling star remembers flash-floods of swirling froth & foam

in diagonal rivers of Gorgon-like rain.

A falling star remembers uncertainty is a certainty & pencils once broken

can never be forgotten.

& Elsewhere (for yes there is an elsewhere) prepare the shapeshifting wand!

Now become a bird of prey.

Howling into spinal columns like renegade DNA.

Today is the day of Renegade Beauty!

Now Zeroic/Freakshow/Peepshow-naut!

Now a day you never imagined!

Nemesis engraved upon the karmic wheel.

Hubris returning in flight aimed like a boomerang.

Shadow wide as the wings of a pterodyctal.

Today is the day of Renegade Beauty!

A day to shriek! To thrash antediluvian wings!

Today the ill-gained cosmetics you pocketed

transform into supernatural dust to reveal the truth.

Now Zeroic/Freakshow/Peepshow-naut! Now you cannot scrub it away.

The vimani pilot saw your portrait on the wall & sailed away

unable to explain.

A snake shed his skin of transparent parchment

coiled in the crown of your hair

as you walk the red carpet

jocular with the purveyors of excess.

Before your First Breath you arrived with an expiry date.

In fame you suffer amnesia.

The ever perambulatory William Blake strolls upon a bridge

rising above stones carved in runes.

Oblivious to the overnight pop-up museum’s monumental retrospective.

Heralded as ‘a sensational exhibition’ by the CEO of the World’s Largest Hole.

William Blake glowing light: an orb or the halo of a tadpole-comet, exalting in ecstasies of ancient hoops.

Penetrating to the centre of the egg & washing his ears & examining the depth of his navel.

& Rolling up his shirt cuffs intercedes in ruined beauty at the periphery of the vista.

Working in ink and the materials of the worker.

William Blake seeding Songs of Innocence and of Experience.

Beggers beg at the gates of looming institutions.

& Who can say he did not graduate from a pine tree?

& Who can say she did not graduate from a field of clover?

Wings in the centre of language blaze ivory-fire

(Mr. Blake my mother said you would like this bread).

Songbirds line the bridge, one by one, on the quartz railing.

Good morning Mr. Blake they sing as if a lullaby.

In the Temple of Binoculars one wild bull pulls a chain collapsing pillars,

perpindicular & askew.

Tin foil rhinoceros & lions cast shadows.

Cyclops, catching his breath beneath slabs of marble,

warning of the mind & psyche collectively disintegrating.

Who & Where & When?

Little Bo Peep, who rhymes with sheep, has lost her rights to the common grazing grounds.

The ever perambulatory William Blake brings her an apple & a printed sheaf.

He will decode the cumbersome legalese.

And as for what to undertake they will agree in solidarity.

Now Zeroic/Freakshow/Peepshow-naut stirs a plastic spoon. Stomps in boots across the floor.

Opens the bathroom cabinet testing powders, creams & fragrant sprays.

Decides he looks like Beethoven on a motorcycle or maybe a movie star.

The kind who used to be in Hollywood magazines.

The family crouches behind a half-demolished wall cornered on three sides.

If they return the instant coffee will be gone.

& Elsewhere (for yes there is an elsewhere) Neolithic hunting parties, still dressed for the hunt,

materialize in the aether, alive in stone, in bone broth & sound,

asleep for eons in the depths of a pulsating chamber.

Drink, of the Original Thought, lashing vines & knotting veins.

Drink, of the First Principle, inscribing lengths of wand-like wood.

Prepare the shapeshifting wand! Now become a whirlwind.

No taller than a heron, speaking in shamanic fits

of rage & grief.

Ash gone white in shamanic fits of shame & disbelief.

& Chanting the ravens’ lucid dreamtime deeply into the cauldron.

& Swirling blood-red poetry casting spells of haunted sound.

What was that? I don’t know. Did you see the hummingbird?

In your psychic prison, Prisoner Zeroic/Freakshow/Peepshow-naut,

the poison of your fingertips touches the graveyard of your face.

Your silhouette staining The Garden Walls of Babylon shall fade

as you become Dorian Gray.

Your silhouette staining The Garden Wall of Golgotha shall fade

as you manipulate a pinhole camera. As you sip sucrose-fructose.

As you recalibrate the diabolical.

Vanish! Banished!

Enough is enough!

A crack in the ant farm discombobulates the matrix, now tilted, now losing speed.

Cyclops sits at the tip of a chanting pinecone, his archaic inner eye scratched in the crisis.

A local physician, loyal to the mountain’s daughter, signs a prescription in cursive font elegant as a Hellenistic vase.

2 Comments
November 6, 2024

I was ‘barely old.’

In 2015, when I did this drawing, I was barely old.

Leonard Cohen already said the more poetic almost young.

Ten years later & more than barely old I am committed to my most energy-intensive work to date.

A whirlwind out-of-the-blue arrived to stir the cauldron.

I completed a large work which became the first half of an unexpected diptych.

Work #1 (of the diptych) discussed here.

Work #2 (of the diptych) discussed here.

When I made the first mark on the first roll of paper, I sensed the volume of energy arising.

The whirlwind stirred up a triptych. An unexpected triptych.

One-third of my way into the final roll of 5′ X 33′ paper, I needed to deal with matters requiring my attention.

Celtic bird-man (in warm black watercolour) is where & when the project paused on Work #3.

This pause allows me time to imagine & sketch multiple possibilities. Unexpected possibilities.

I will complete this daunting 5′ X 100′ work as soon as possible.

  • This posting is an update of a previous posting.

8 Comments
October 24, 2024

Did Not the Fisherman

Did not the fisherman go to the end,

as one fantasizes one might,

in dignity & sacrifice.

Did not the fisherman go to the end

resisting stone pillars transported by iron wheels

echoing a terrible power.

Did not the fisherman steer the vessel,

loaded with mysteriously shaped cargo,

away from the whale & her calf.

Did not the fisherman blow into a prehistoric 

shell, architectural & coagulated,

born of the turbulent ocean.

Born of hunger & loss.

& Did not the fisherman go to the end.

As invisible frequencies ricochet

invading the bones of the innocent.

& Diving into hunger and loss.

& Targeting the spiritual password at the

root & crown of human imagination.

Incandescent golden ink

& iridescent golden ink

become

a lion,

a madwoman,

a forest.

Or a chiaroscuro art film,

as the fisherman kneels, in ashes,

summoning the mystery power.

& Did not the fisherman go to the end.

The muscles in his fearless gold-tinted heart

heave & conceive & receive coded messages.

& The talk show host coughing up a string of unknown words

twisting himself into contortions of vinegary laughter.

& A vintage typewriter blown into the air lands upside down,

in rubble on the hillside, beside a spoon & a shoe.

Did not the fisherman comfort a starving horse buried in rubble & fleas.

Rolling & dragging away the debris.

Did not the fisherman push a ladder to the gardener balancing a bag of seeds.

Obsidian air streaming out a jutting chasm beneath an olive tree.

Pressurized eons blasting out chakras curving the spine of time.

Sunglasses reflect the point of no return.

A jury of citizens request the legal definition of genocide.

A tree, thought lost forever, sending forth green twigs.

& The conception of a child on a starry night beneath ancient lamplight.

& The beginning begins again.

Did not the fisherman go to the end

with a rope between his teeth.

A rope erupting rose thorns.

Did not the fisherman’s gold-tinted heart transmit rays of the rose

with a promise to return.

& The beginning begins again.

When his family opens a heavy door to greet him.

When their eyes meet.

When an atom, silvery-pale as a dandelion puffball,

& embedded with a sacred language,

navigates the round towers of a vanished people,

& the nests of the vanished birds,

& The Great Library of Alexandria.

& A scribe’s brush dipped in golden ink

becomes a divining pure eagle of fire.

& The talk show host coughing up a string of unknown words

twisting himself into contortions of vinegary laughter.

& The engraved markings on a wooden stick

blink a coded message, undulating

a serpentine prophecy.

Curvilinear as a triple spiral

engraved in stone.

Did not the fisherman conjure power by dint of his scent, sweat & blood.

Telegraph poles in formation move in a holographic vapour.

Read the telegram.

Pressurized eons blasting out chakras curving the spine of time.

Read the telegram again.

Did not the fisherman go to the end,

as one fantasizes one might,

in dignity & sacrifice.

13 Comments
October 13, 2024

You call my name, or something similar, in your sleep or in my dream

You call my name, or something similar, in your sleep or in my dream.

We begin the long march to ecstasy perfumed with oblivion & beads of sweat,

fight lions after binding ourselves back to back with a muscular vine,

& nearly drown during an eclipse.

You call my name, or something similar, in your sleep or in my dream.

The comedy club requires fingerprints pressed to a screen,

same as the eyeglasses store.

We discover a boat within the boat we dig out of sediment.

You call my name, or something similar, in your sleep or in my dream.

We mistake The Code of Hammurabi Avenue for Morse Code Boulevard

& I screw the wrong cap onto the tube of Crazy Glue.

You call my name, or something similar, in your sleep or in my dream.

We discover criminal activity undertaken in broad daylight,

both admitted and denied, by officials with strange eyes,

in the slow drip of cryptic deceit.

You call my name, or something similar, in your sleep or in my dream.

Your voice echoes like Artaud reciting history inside a hollow stone sphinx,

electric lights in the Department of Missing Persons flicker & darken.

Your name on the envelope blows into the wind like a rose petal.

You call my name, or something similar, in your sleep or in my dream.

Newspapers breathlessly report the relationship of nothingness to nothingness,

& emergency measures forbid speaking while purchasing milk or cotton or soap.

You call my name, or something similar, in your sleep or in my dream.

You journey to the asteroid dead in its tracks above a cornfield

& wash smoke out of your hair.

I juggle my shoes & drag a burlap bag of chicken bones

& broken pencils.

You call my name, or something similar, in your sleep or in my dream.

A cluster of oracles attribute your obsession with mirrors to a butterfly

glowing (& menacing) with translucent wings emanating fiery heat.

The ocean heaves pulverized rubies ashore, fine as ash,

to wash & purify children of the mirror.

We learn to walk beneath a translucent sun.

You call my name, or something similar, in your sleep or in my dream.

You kick burning tires down the street in an existential city.

We listen beneath the shaded archway, as hairline cracks develop,

as Hannibal requires his elephant-drivers, courtesans & spies

explain the subtle yet vivid green of pine needles.

You call my name, or something similar, in your sleep or in my dream.

The fast food drive-thru employee ceremoniously hands you clove cigarettes,

chess pieces & thorns in a glass bowl instead of French fries.

You call my name, or something similar, in your sleep or in my dream.

A washing machine shaking violently loosens bolts in the concrete floor.

Van Gogh cannot reach his face & tied to the bed he sobs.

Postage stamps & bathing beauties innocently beguile.

Floppy hats disguise civilizational collapse.

You call my name, or something similar, in your sleep or in my dream.

During the siege of a walled city you discover your name on a secret list,

& the falling moon in a constellation of automobile headlamps signals

the beginning of the one true revolution.

You call my name, or something similar, in your sleep or in my dream.

Nefertiti hypnotizes The Beatles,

a herd of llamas escape,

& blind tourists robbed at gunpoint refuse to laugh it off.

You call my name, or something similar, in your sleep or in my dream.

They parade out the latest deadly cures,

the dancing nurses smash jars of green pickles,

& Mona Lisa announces to the world she is closing the curtain permanently.

You call my name, or something similar, in your sleep or in my dream.

You report a rickshaw collision with angels & the police accuse you of mischief.

A work crew sent by unknown authorities to seal the sacred spring

develops amnesia,

& you have the same dream three times each night. 

You call my name, or something similar, in your sleep or in my dream.

A shaman anoints the tip of your nose with a white paste,

a figure behind a streaked glass windshield adjusts frequencies

aiming a device dead centre on a wasp nest,

& inside the mountain cavern after a day of climbing your stomach feels better.

¥ou call my name, or something similar, in your sleep or in my dream.

Ice cream tastes like karma,

death comes around wearing a fur coat with a giant collar of darker fur,

& everybody looks like Peter O’Toole having a panic attack.

You call my name, or something similar, in your sleep or in my dream.

You continue to gaze at the Encyclopedia of Bare Feet Upon Grass

even as I warn you of dangers in Babylon.

You call my name, or something similar, in your sleep or in my dream.

You write on the chalkboard while sitting on a camel & departing the oasis.

A waterspout of insects shoots up, fractal as stained glass,

escaping a bottomless chalk-lined chamber.

I pilot a butterfly.

You call my name, or something similar, in your sleep or in my dream.

An avalanche of icicles disturbs the tiger’s sleep,

a junkyard dog wearing a suicide vest runs loose in the marshmallow factory,

& black parakeets swooping in dark staircases resemble inky typography.

You call my name, or something similar, in your sleep or in my dream.

A devotee of the Forgotten World Religious Society tumbles bars of soap

into a growling & flashing volcano.

The guardian of the portal sends us on a wild goose chase,

& a painter specializing in ferns claims to be Heironymus Bosch reincarnated.

You call my name, or something similar, in your sleep or in my dream.

The scientist wearing a stethascope & white coat nursing the anvil

with a baby bottle

repeats your name and assigns you a number.

Original image. Gouache & water-soluble graphite on paper, 2021.

Variations digitally created in Photoshop, 2024.

6 Comments
September 25, 2024

When it happens you will know.

You navigate the sacred & you navigate the profane.

You navigate transient & symbolic worlds.

You navigate the fire extinguishers of culture.

You navigate the hypnotizing sucrose of media.

You navigate the razzle-dazzle of illusion in a surrealistic

disordering of the senses.

You navigate translucent nourishment within

the blood & dreams of your ancestors.

In all of this you are certain.

When it happens you will know.

You are surrounded by shadows.

Shadows lead to this moment.

A moment determining the future.

In nourishment you navigate.

In navigation you are nourished.

In all of this you are certain.

When it happens you will know.

In no way do I claim copyright over original resource

materials used for purposes of commentary & used

in combinations to generate new images.

2 Comments
August 23, 2024

Two Symmetrical Suns Illumine the Animal Mask

In memory of twin suns.

In memory of bone & wood.

In memory of transformation.

In memory of antlers.

In magic.

In ecstatic chaos completely forgotten

two symmetrical suns illumine the animal mask.

In memory of stone.

In memory of starlight.

In shape-shifting completely forgotten

two symmetrical suns illumine the animal mask.

Intermediaries of the Otherworld

mediate touch in your fingertips

& mediate muscle

rising the mounts of your palm,

& mediate the joints flexible in your thumbs.

1 Comment
August 16, 2024

Consider the Shadow-Rain of Guernica

In hanging gardens & multi-dimensional language,

in empathetic irrigation of the human-heart,

in roots shaped like geometrical echoes,

consider intention.

Consider a symmetrical sun, almond-yellow, radiating the sky

buoyant as a cloak reconfigured by the wind

& reconfiguring a composition: the human heart

unfolding like origami or a magician’s flower bouquet.

Roots drip amber-nectar-sundrops

disguising archeological diagrams of the human heart

with geometrical echoes.

Consider intentions.

Consider soil trailing tendrils as it climbs the clay wall.

Consider two-dimensional projections of Guernica (the painting)

hovering face down.

Consider negative space in the X-rays,

thin wires tightened floor to ceiling,

a cloud of static pressed flat.

Consider the shadow-rain of Guernica.

Consider the surface of mirrors.

Along the ruined street

a young Palestinian father in a backwards baseball cap

carries his child wrapped head to toe in white cloth

up to his waist in waters gushing from concrete pipes

smashed to rubble.

Two actors view Picasso’s Guernica convincingly & with one fork

share a sponge-like delicacy dribbled with chocolate on a gold-trimmed plate,

the edge of the tablecloth wet with dank water swirling, as they whisper

convincingly in dulcet tones & put a coin in the jukebox, suddenly aware

of the shadow-rain mirroring two worlds and one reality.

Yesterday, for the first time this summer, I saw

a grasshopper – perched on a drainpipe at a slight diagonal,

hyper-vigilant, his shadow deep green ash.

Consider a symmetrical sun, almond-yellow, radiating the sky

buoyant as a cloak reconfigured by the wind &

reconfiguring a composition: the human heart

unfolding like origami or a magician’s flower bouquet.

Roots drip amber-nectar-sundrops

disguising archeological diagrams of the human heart

with geometrical echoes.

Consider soil trailing tendrils as it climbs the clay wall.

Consider two-dimensional projections of Guernica (the painting)

hovering face down.

Consider negative space in the X-rays,

thin wires tightened floor to ceiling,

a cloud of static pressed flat.

Consider the shadow-rain of Guernica.

Consider the surface of mirrors.

Digital manipulations of linocut prints by S. McCabe

4 Comments
July 24, 2024

One Very Sunny Day An Egg Enveloped My Shadow

photo S. McCabe

One very sunny day an egg shall envelop my shadow. An eagle shall be overhead, perhaps a bit to the east or west, lowering into the updraft, on the hunt & returning to the nest satisfied.

A robin swooping into shade swallows a delicately tangled necklace of humming insects. A heron drapes her wing upon a sloping stone & swallows magnetic frogs who prophesize.

A hen clucking like a sticky typewriter key repeats the sound of curvilinear incantations, unceasing, between echoes of breath, sleep & a sudden kerfuffle.

Photo S. McCabe

Egg, tell me how we shall begin.

Photo S. McCabe

Egg, tell me how we shall accomplish our mission.

Photo S. McCabe

One very sunny day an egg enveloped my shadow. I was minding my own business. I felt my blood in the sun-blood of my ancestors.

I felt them go ashore. I felt them carve and chisel enveloped by shadows. I felt them carry fire. I felt them carry a weighted promise.

Photo S. McCabe

Egg, tell me who & what, alchemically one very sunny day, you shall become in traveling a distant path to yourself: An eagle, a fluent ballerina, or a sun-flecked tidal wave. An astronaut, cosmonaut or vimani pilot. A Spanish painter rising like cream in early Modernism.

Or the hen caught up in a sudden kerfuffle. Or the heron draping elegant ink-like feathers. Or the barrel-chested north wind whiplashing trees. An opera singer who resounds triumphantly or a trumpeter swan harkening. A blue parakeet, nodding his fuzzy head, asleep & dreaming.

Or a sea turtle diving in the dark. The Ice Age thawing, a solar flare consuming or a fairy-tale princess personifying an archetype. A sphinx-like barn owl in the rafters, a barn swallow exiting a hole, or an amber bale of hay. A cosmic chant vibrating hearts. Fire-flame in a bowl. In a deep cauldron.

The language of trees. Dotted zigzags on grey stone carved with a chisel. A dotted triple spiral carved with a chisel. A feather wafting into a mist. A deer-god in a yoga position. The full moon fully incandescent. An escapee escaping hollow & corrupt civilizational madness. A druid-like hero, positioned in the now, opening portals to before. I promise I will tell nobody.

Photo S. McCabe

Egg, tell me where & when we shall meet again.

Photo S. McCabe

One very sunny day an egg enveloped my shadow & all shadows.

Photo S. McCabe

One very sunny day an egg enveloped salt & the volatile, shadows of the mighty & ancient world, honey & vinegar, shadows of this world in the light of this world, goats hanging in a market & geraniums in shade, clandestine meetings, the animated shadows we imagine spilling forward, the final page of a novel steeped in symbolism, shadows of a future dread we pledge to circumvent, sacrificing & shattering our personal selves to preserve, as guardians, the original innocent nourishment of joy & play, for all children & childhood, unfolding like the age-old unseen.

For the original brilliant sun. For the mechanics and gears of illumination, opposite to opaque – yet weighted with antiquity. Like an ancient accordion book, one very sunny day, unfolding & evolving.

Egg, show me those secret markings you made on the trees.

I don’t know how this egg came to be (unfortunately) on the sidewalk but the encounter stayed with me. This posting developed over a couple of weeks. First I put up ‘scene of the crime’ photographs along with the first draft of a poem. Then I edited the poem, with changes to the text visible in almost ‘real time.’ Then I created digital (Photoshop) manipulations of the photos using colour. Then it dawned on me to check a symbol dictionary for meanings associated with this entity and shape.

In The Book of Symbols: Reflections on Archetypal Images I read: ‘The egg is the mysterious ‘center’ around which unconscious energies move in spiral-like evolutions, gradually bringing the vital substance to light…’ If the egg had not been on the sidewalk (with yolk & egg white spilled out the cracked shell & spread across the concrete) I doubt I would have thought of an egg at that moment. Thus, my imagination turned synchronicity into images & text. One might also say sound. The egg, there and then in loss, became a poetic vessel for hope & empathy.

Leave a comment
July 6, 2024

falling & falling & falling & flying looks like falling

2 Comments
July 1, 2024

The authorities & Mythical Zeus (a prose poem)

The authorities said we have your fingerprints.

Mythical Zeus said I am certain this is impossible.

The authorities said beyond any shadow of a doubt.

Mythical Zeus said I have no memory of being here.

The authorities said you have been here thousands of times.

Mythical Zeus, in flux like a wavery obsidian shadow, said I am certain this is impossible.

The authorities said we constantly retrieve your fingerprints, alongside other evidence.

Mythical Zeus said perhaps I know this location by another name.

The authorities said possibly you have forgotten, an easy mistake to make.

Mythical Zeus said why do you – how strange – you would speak to me of memory.

The authorities said possibly you have have been deceived.

Mythical Zeus said why do you – how strange – I am not aware of mistakes or deception.

The authorities said we can be of great assistance with this – with you – with clearing your name…

Mythical Zeus said I am on a search-party mission to rename & reactivate thought-forms previously declared abandoned & lost. And I am not lost.

The authorities, concurring, said we wish to save you from your illness.

Mythical Zeus said I am not aware of any illness.

The authorities, concurring, said please sign the form giving consent.

Mythical Zeus said what will be done based on my signature if I sign.

The authorities said whatever we deem consequently necessary to deactivate the current situation.

Mythical Zeus took a deep breath, diving like Johnny Weissmuller into the multidimensional ocean, on his search-party mission to realign & reassign thought-forms previously declared abandoned & lost. Alone, he did not feel abandoned.

The last line of the poem places the images in context. A figure in motion as if underwater in a multidimensional ocean. A figure suspended like an angel above a medieval landscape, swimming through the air.

2 Comments